In Loving Memory

Marilyn Winn Green is my sister-in-law's mother. Deanna's mom. Eight months ago, she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and began to battle for her life. A week ago she was sent home from the hospital with a hospice nurse to make her as comfortable as possible while she lived out the last week of her life surrounded by her loved ones.

It seems such a strange thing, to be told that you will die within the week. I cannot even begin to fathom what must have been going through her mind!

I will say this; while it is horrible to have life stripped from you in any way, and I sorrow for her sufferings and those of her family, what a beautiful thing to knowingly spend your last days in the arms of those you love! She had the opportunity to comfort and be comforted. To say last goodbyes until they meet again in the Lord's time. There will be none of the regrets that come from thinking, 'if only I had known it was the last time I would see her'.

She passed away quietly on Monday morning, surrounded by her grown children and her husband. I was told that Sunday evening, each of her grandchildren was able to go in the bedroom to talk to her one last time. She was lucid all the way to the end.

Her funeral was beautiful! She actually had planned it out herself! Again, I can't even imagine doing such a thing! The church choir sang her favorite song, 'In This Very Room'. All her grandchildren sang 'A Child's Prayer'. There were many funny remembrances from friends and family who spoke. One of her daughters told a funny story about the night they used their in-home movie theater room for the first time. Marilyn decided it needed a dedication, so she stood in the light of the projector and belted out "The Star Spangled Banner", off key. For years after that, she would break out in "The Star Spangled Banner" at odd moments, always on the wrong note at first, and wouldn't stop (no matter how much anyone pleaded) until the last awkward note rang out. Her daughters asked her if she wanted "The Star Spangled Banner" to be the opening hymn at the funeral and she told them 'No, because then everyone would have to stand up'. She also informed them that the funeral 'danged well better last only an hour!'

The funeral service ended with the hymn, 'Our Savior's Love', and a prayer by her father, Spencer Winn.

No parent should have to bury their child. No matter that the child is a grandmother herself.

She passed away the same way she lived her life, with humor and dignity. I am proud I got to know her and that she opened her home and her heart to me and my family. She will be greatly missed.

Volunteer, anyone?

Today was a very full day for me.

After work, I brought the kids home just long enough for Helena to get ready for ballet. After dropping her off at the studio, I headed for my afternoon inservice meeting at Shelley Elementary.

Inservice meetings are held for teachers to get together and learn ways to be better teachers. In theory. Often they are times for us to get together and visit. Most of the inservices this year were scheduled for times that did not work with my schedule, so I simply did not attend.

This meeting was different. The timing worked (mostly), and it was held at my local elementary school; the one my children attended. It was nice to be able to stop in and visit for a moment with the office staff and various grade level teachers who taught my children.

When I arrived at Joseph Germaine's classroom (the art teacher there, and a good friend), the room erupted with surprised delight that I had finally decided to grace them with my presence. You see, I know most of these people from having attended many other inservices and conferences with them in past years. I really do feel like I fell off the map a bit this year.

I did enjoy the meeting, and got a great clay lesson idea that I will definitely do next year.

The meeting was scheduled to go until 6:00 p.m., but I had another commitment for the American Fork Arts Council at 5:30, so I had to duck out early and head to the Fox Hollow golf club banquet hall. It is National Volunteer Week, and I was off to do a bit of volunteering.

Once there, I set up the centerpiece display for the visual arts board's volunteer booth. This was supposed to be the grand kick-off for volunteer week, with booths for all and sundry to come sign up to give service for whichever noble cause struck their fancy.

Oh, boy.

The speaker spent AN HOUR preaching to the choir, because the people running the booths were the only ones there! I was so highly entertained, that I spent a good half of her speech impressing a honeycomb pattern into the flesh of my forearm with the back of that little pencil they hand out to golfers before they head out to play! Bill thought that was very masochistic of me. I thought it made a cool pattern with a neat texture and it kept me from yawning in the middle of it all. There weren't enough people there to hide a yawn from the speaker, and I really didn't want to hurt her feelings, because her heart was in the right place.

After 2 1/2 HOURS of NO VOLUNTEERS, we started to pack up. That is when it happened! Two Boy Scout troop leaders walked in the door saying something about needing a community service project for their boys. Heidi (the Steel Days Art Show Director) and I flashed a glance at each other and simultaneously descended on those two unsuspecting men before anyone else had a chance to snag them. Of course, by then most of the other booths had long since given up and thrown in the towel.

So, after all, we ended up with a semi solid agreement to 'enlist' (or would the boys see it as 'enslave'?) 10 or so 13 year old boys for their own good (can you say Citizenship in the Community merit badge?) to help with the set up and take down of the art show scaffolding.

I'd better make sure there are donuts there for them on set up day, or they may go AWOL for the take down!

texting a blog, anyone?

this is a quick test of the texting blog feature....

Why did the chicken cross the road?

I have to preface this post with a side story.

Our across-the-street neighbors 'adopted' a chicken that has been wandering around on our street since last fall. No one knows where the bird came from, nor why she initially decided that our street was the place for her. The neighbors bought chicken feed and leave it out for her every day. Now she roosts in the pine tree next to their front door and is quite tame.

Okay, now for my story.

Bill has been working in the yard today, removing damaged tree limbs and trimming the plum tree. He left the back yard gate open so that the dogs could follow him about the yard, front and back.

Eventually, the inevitable happened; Demi saw the chicken across the road.

Okay, so why did the chicken cross the road?

TO GET AWAY FROM MY DOGS!!!!

Sorry, couldn't resist!

Anyway, Demi tore off across the road after the chicken with Bill in hot pursuit. He chased Demi (chasing the chicken) all the way around our across-the-street neighbor's house and...

wait for it...

...across the road to our yard. There, Bella joined the fun and both dogs managed to catch the chicken in our back yard! Bella had it by the throat when Bill finally caught up with the melee!

I am afraid that Bill was not very gentle with Bella whilst rescuing the chicken from her clutches.

Fortunately, the chicken survived the ordeal none the worse for wear (sans a few feathers, of course) and Bill carried it back to the neighbors, who had come out to see what all the ruckus was about.

So there you have it, The REAL reason the chicken crossed the road! I should win the Nobel prize for solving one of life's greatest questions!

Ciao!

And then there was mud

Here is the last update on our April snow storm. Most of the snow melted off during the day, leaving my torn up construction site of a yard a complete mud hole!!! Oh, yeah! Don't you wish you had my yard?

Now here is the fun part. The dogs run all over the back yard, then want to come inside! Not without a bath!!!!

Cheers!

The morning after the storm...

I managed to get to bed a little after 3:00 a.m. The cats get really hyper at night! Urgh.

Anyway, I had every intention of sleeping most of the day away. Bill was going to stay home again today. However, at 7:15 a.m., Bill's work called him to go plow snow in parking lots. Before he took off with our snow shovel (to do sidewalks), I quickly shovelled our front walk, then went and helped our across the street neighbor get back into his house. He is a quadriplegic and got his motorized wheelchair stuck in the snow while trying to get his morning paper.

After Bill left, I walked down to Shirley Gray's house to help her shovel her driveway. She is a widow and really shouldn't be breaking her back over heavy snow! She needed her driveway clear so she could drive her daughter, Pam, to work. Otherwise we could have just let it melt on its own.

When I got home, Bill called and suggested that I drive Pam to work in the Expedition. The roads were clear, but the parking lots weren't and Shirley's car is not 4 wheel drive.

So I did. Shirley came with and took me out to breakfast afterwards at Burger King.

All of this before 9:00 a.m. and on only 4 hours of sleep!

The storm was between 4" and 6" of heavy, wet snow. Unfortunately, the heavy load was too much for many tree branches all over town. Our flowering plum in the front yard was a casualty of the storm. It has 4 limbs broken off. Once it is dry enough out we will trim down the tree and survey the damage. The center photo in the collage is a picture of the biggest break.

Hard to believe that Helena and I were laying in the back yard on Saturday, sunning ourselves!

By the way, if you click on the collage, you will see an enlarged version so that you can see each individual image up close!

SNOW!!!

No, this is not an April Fool's joke, although I wish it was!!! Yesterday, Bill stayed home from work because it was so wet and rainy that his job site was too swampy. Mid-day, it began to snow.

We spent the day indoors, playing games and otherwise being absolute lazy slugs! It was great! I love vacation for the unscheduled time it gives me.

We played so long that we didn't notice the time and ended up accidentally staying up past 2 a.m.! All except, Helena, that is, who went to bed around 11:00 p.m.

The rock invasion, part 2

Here are more photos of the work Bill did on the window wells and back yard on Saturday. As you can tell, I am very excited whenever something new happens around here! These are shots of Helena's window. It is hard to get a scale on it, but the window is 5 feet tall and the rocks come almost all the way to the top of the window. It is right next to the driveway, so Bill has built the well higher than the driveway to create a planter/buffer between the well and the drive. Hopefully, that way, no one will end up IN the well instead of NEXT to it!

Easter monring photos

These are the photos of Easter morning at our house. I like to give the kids some little toy along with their candy and this year it was a punching balloon. I am not sure how wise that was because I am already going nuts with the noise of them!

A cake named Gwyn

Helena wanted to make a cake for Easter. She brought the cake mix upstairs from the storage. When it came time use the blender, however, she balked. I ended up mixing the cake! What a goofy girl.

She baked the cake, but then seemed to run out of steam. She left the cake in the pans until today. Then, she discovered that they simply did not want to come out of the pans. When it was time to make the frosting, again, she wouldn't do the mixers. So, once again, I did the mixing. Perhaps that is why the frosting didn't turn out either. I didn't have my heart in it, you see.

Anyway, Helena laughed over the resulting cake, which she named "Gwyn". That is the reason for the 'G' on the top of the cake.

It won't win any beauty prizes, but I bet it will taste delicious!

A non-traditional Easter

This year, the kids didn't want to hunt for Easter eggs. So we didn't even bother decorating any. They, of course, wanted baskets, though! I was actually relieved that they didn't want to hunt eggs, because our back yard is a complete mud pit right now due to Bill's work with the equipment. More pictures of follow of that!

We did have some ham and deviled eggs for lunch/dinner, but then ended up going over to Crystal and Jeff's house to hang out and eat pizza in the evening. That was really fun! The pictures above are from Crystal's house. The center shot is Helena holding Marcus, her newest cousin. At 4 months, he is only one month younger than her youngest Weierholt cousin, Tori. The other shots are of Helena and her cousin, Sarah, playing Twister. There aren't any photos of Will, because he and his cousin, David, stayed out of sight most of the evening. Helena likes to hang out with the adults, however, so Sarah stayed close, too. Sarah looks up to Helena a ton, and Helena loves her right back.

Oh, my wonderful husband!

Yesterday, Will, his friend, Dallan, and I watched a side dump truck pull up in front of our house and dump an entire load of large rocks onto my front yard. It was Bill driving the truck! Then, Bill drove off; only to return a little later with a trailer full of equipment behind his regular work truck. Today, Bill spent the entire day shuffling and manipulating those rocks into window wells for the kids' windows and the laundry room. The extra rocks he took to the back yard and began the back yard remodel as well.

Watching Bill operate the equipment is simply amazing! It seems as if the machine becomes an extension of his own arm! There is a finesse there that makes it entertaining to watch. I watched him casually pick up huge boulders and inspect them from all angles, just to fling them aside to choose another, more promising one.

Bill had to move the two small fruit trees in the back yard in order to work back there. He doesn't think they will survive the move. He didn't think he got enough of the root ball, and it is the wrong time of year to move trees. Well, if they don't make it, we'll just have to get new ones. Maybe a pear instead of the apple, but definitely another nectarine! Fresh homegrown nectarines are amazing!

The kids (especially Helena) are thrilled with the window wells. SO AM I! Instead of ugly metal, they will each have their own rock garden to tend. Hopefully next week I will be able to help the kids pick out and plant their gardens to keep the soil around the rocks from eroding. I expect that Helena will make her garden bloom. I'm not as confident with Will, but time will tell.